


Spark Energy

by ultharkitty



Category: Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:25:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wrote this for the gestalt_love Trick or Treat Halloween Challenge. I'll put the prompt in the end notes because it's spoilerific. </p><p>Set on the Lost Light, after the events of the MTMTE Annual. First Aid has a new patient, and all is not as it seems. </p><p>Contains: major character death, graphic violence, undead, very mild spoilers for characters/events in MTMTE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spark Energy

**The Lost Light, Medibay  
Two hours after departing the asteroid field**

 

"Power's at twelve percent," Ambulon said. "I'm going to re-route non-essential systems to life support. Brace yourself, it's about to get gloomy."

First Aid murmured his acknowledgment, focusing on the readouts from their latest casualty. "This can't be right." 

"What can't be right?" Ambulon called. A clatter sounded as he dropped the maintenance hatch. 

First Aid checked the connections and tapped the side of the monitor. "Just a glitch in the equipment," he said. "It was giving me a spark energy reading of zero. It's back up to two percent now though."

"Two percent?" Ambulon said. "He's lucky Drift found him. OK, brownout in three... two..."

The lights went out, and for a moment the room was green with the glow of the monitors. Then the emergency lighting came on, and the green was replaced with a clinical blue.

The casualty twitched.

First Aid checked the readings again. Energy levels were stable, but brainwave activity was next to nil; this wasn't a mech who was about to wake up. 

There was a clang and a muttered expletive as Ambulon backed out of and resealed the maintenance hatch. "All done," he called.

The mech's lips moved.

As First Aid stared, they moved again. There was no corresponding spike of neural activity; the patient was in stasis, his movements were independent of his motor functions. 

They could be the after-effects of temperature change, First Aid thought. Since his rescue by Drift from an asteroid, the mech had gone from the ambient temperature of deep space to the balmy interior of the Lost Light. There was bound to be some expansion. 

First Aid took another look at his patient's wounds. There was a long gash down his side, patched now but formerly open to the cold and the radiation. His face was scratched, his heat shields cracked. The mech was an Autobot, a shuttleformer. He'd been designed to withstand worse, but if Drift hadn't found him, he never would have made his way off that asteroid. 

First Aid didn't like to think about it. He wiped a sheen of condensation from the shuttleformer's chilly face, and moved onto the next of his patients. 

Ratchet was likewise still and cool, but at least he was only unconscious. The peaks and valleys of his neural graph told of active dreams; hopefully they'd do him good. After a run-in with a malfunctioning rivet gun had put a crack in his primary fuel pump - not to mention everything else that had happened recently - he could use a little rest.

The shuttleformer groaned. 

"Creepy when they do that," Ambulon commented. "I'm going to go check in with Rodimus, see how long before they get comms back online. Will you be OK in here?"

"I'll be fine," First Aid said. Comms were more important than company. Besides, the way things went on the Lost Light, he wouldn't be by himself for long. 

Ambulon left. The shuttleformer sat up.

"Oh nononono!" First Aid sprung to his side, taking his arms and gently but firmly pushing him onto his back. "You need to lay down and rest," he said. There was a 0.02% chance the mech could hear him, but it was better to sound silly than risk scaring a disorientated injured patient. "You're in medibay on the Lost Light. I'm First Aid, Assistant CEO. I'm going to look after you, you just need to lay down."

It was a struggle, and scrap the mech was strong, but eventually he subsided. That sure was some metal expansion, First Aid had never seen anything like it. 

In fact, he wasn't sure it _was_ metal expansion. 

"Can you hear me?" he said. Brainwave activity remained weak, at the lower threshold of normal for stasis. Energy had dipped to zero. 

His patient sighed. 

First Aid felt like sighing too. The shuttleformer couldn't sigh without power, he couldn't maintain basic brainwave functionality without power. Ergo, the machine was broken, and First Aid would need to fetch another out of storage. Something he couldn't do until Ambulon came back. 

"Easy now," First Aid said. "I'm going to disconnect you from the spark monitor, it's developed a glitch. It's nothing to worry about, but I'll need to connect directly to your medical port." He unspooled the cable from his wrist. "Aaaaand there." First Aid waited for the data streams to synch. And waited. 

"I'm sorry," he said, as it became obvious that synching wasn't going to happen. "I'm going to need direct access to your spark. This won't hurt, but it might feel a little strange." 

Strange was a good word for the Lost Light, First Aid thought. Accidents and anomalies, weird noises and power fluctuations; those were everyday life on board. And now this.

Gently and carefully he uncoupled and unscrewed, opening up the shuttleformer's broad chest. 

And froze. 

* * *

The ship's comms crackled and a shrill screech of feedback split Ambulon's audials. 

"Online!" Rodimus whooped. Ultra Magnus glared, and Ambulon felt it was about time he made a dignified exit. 

Thank scrap someone knew how to repair things. He stopped at a comm station in the corridor, and punched in the code for medibay. "Aid," he said. "We're back. Full power should be restored in two hours."

The comm whined.

"First Aid, pick up. Don't tell me it's still broken."

"There's no spark." 

"What?" Ambulon rolled his optics. He'd thought First Aid had gotten over his erratic phase.

"There no spark," First Aid repeated. His voice shook, and the overriding hiss of static appeared to be generated by something other than the comm. "I've carried out a full analysis, and he's waking up. He's online and he's looking at me, and he's moving but there's just one problem. There's no spark. The shuttleformer from the asteroid _has no spark_."

"Is this a joke?" Ambulon said. "Did Ratchet put you up to this? Ratchet, I know you can hear me. This isn't funny."

"It's not a joke, I... He keeps trying to get up, he's getting stronger. I don't know how it's possible. I need the restraints from delta locker, but I can't reach them while I'm trying to keep him away from Ratchet. Please, Ambulon, I need you. Hurry."

"Yeah, ha ha," Ambulon said dryly. He hung up. Ratchet could leap in a smelter; he was a brilliant surgeon, sure, but his sense of humour stank. Ambulon scratched a flake of paint on his shoulder. And smelt his paintjob too. What the scrap was it with white that it always peeled?

Grumbling, he made his way back to medibay and certain laughter. 

* * *

The shuttleformer had no spark; he had something else entirely. A pool of whirling blackness, an emptiness that sucked at First Aid's optics, forcing him to look. He held the shuttleformer's wrists, trying to keep those hands from his face, that spooling bleak absence of spark from his armour. 

Tendrils whipped out, lashing his chest. They scorched his paint, and dripped a dark substance which hissed and steamed when it hit the floor. 

The shuttleformer was tall. With every push that he made, he had the leverage to force First Aid back, step by agonising slow step, to Ratchet. 

"Ambulon, _hurry!_ " First Aid's shoulders creaked, his gears grinding. This close, he could see what he had failed to recognise before when all other signs had shown him a mech injured and unconscious: the first stages of nanite decay, the onset of rust. The mech's optics were as dead as his body, his mouth hung slackly open. His medical port still carried First Aid's connector, and every so often the medic's firewalls registered an attack from sinister alien code. 

First Aid wished his frame was as resilient as his software. 

* * *

It had to be a prank. Why else would First Aid be lying crumpled in the corner in a pool of... of paint, it had to be. Spilled paint, that was all, because this was a prank. And Ratchet, his sense of humour was sicker than Ambulon had given him credit for. Encouraging an injured, under-energised mech to loom over him looking like he was... he... 

Ratchet's chest was open. His spark flared once.

Ambulon launched himself at the shuttleformer, powering into him shoulder first.

"Don't touch him!" First Aid's cry was weak, the blue gleam of his visor dim even in the gloom of the emergency lighting. He leant up on one elbow, his other arm cradling a spill of fuel-slick cables from a hole in his waist. "Get away. Go... I tried to keep him off, I... I didn't spot it. He's dead, they're both dead. They'll kill you." He lurched, venting hot energon from his mouth.

The shuttleformer swayed, slow and stupid, then reached for Ambulon. The medic ducked, turning it into a swing, bringing his right fist in a cracking blow against the dead mech's face. 

He never saw Ratchet sit up behind him. 

* * *

The dead walked, and the injured crawled. First Aid hauled himself across the floor, trailing energon and oil. Leaning up as high as he could, his head dizzy and his optics shading to black, he hit the button to put medibay in lockdown.

He was too late to stop the newly dead. The shuttleformer had left, the animated frames of Ratchet and Ambulon following hard on its heels. Outside, the screams had already begun.

He couldn't reach the comms. 

There was only one thing to do. He was injured and alone, shading slowly into stasis, but he had the tools and the skills, and he would repair himself. And then he would go out there, and he would stop them. He wasn't dying, the thing hadn't snuffed out his spark. It had torn at him, but he'd attacked it across the interface, seeking to shut down its frame. 

He'd failed, and it had ripped him open and thrown him across the room. 

First Aid was grateful. He had his spark, his mind, his life. 

He reached his tools, tensed against the pain, and set to work.

**Author's Note:**

> I was so tempted to write a further scene where First Aid's storming around the Lost Light with a chainsaw for a hand demolishing zombies, like Ash from The Evil Dead. I didn't, but if anyone wants to write or draw that, that would make my weekend <3
> 
> The prompt was: _Hook or First Aid or both: "I have carried out an analysis and there is only one problem. The mech has no spark..._ (and the prompter wanted darkfic).


End file.
